Left to my own memories, my years as a young mother ­surface mostly as a blur of time when I was thrown ­into the deep end, wishing I’d learned how to swim.

I wish I’d done this better. And this. Oh, and this …

My friend Nat will have none of that.

“This is what I remember about you,” she begins.

Her recollections are generous, summoning images that have faded from view, filling in the blanks. Without Natalie Scalia, I fear, a part of me would not exist.

Nat and I met in the winter of 1995, in a time of upheaval for both of our families.

My young daughter and I had just moved into a first-floor apartment on a road of two-­family houses full of broken hearts and fresh starts. Divorce Street, I called it, usually after a married person heard I was a ­single ­mother and took two steps back, as if I were contagious.

Cait and I had barely unpacked our dishes before Nat moved into the upstairs apartment with her husband, Greg, and their two babies. They’d left balmy Australia for Cleveland, and were greeted by a blizzard.

Huddled like a family of wide-eyed raccoons, they shivered in my doorway and asked where they might buy coats. In that ­instant, I was a tad less scared about what lay in store for me. I might have been getting a divorce, but at least I had winter wear.

Natalie was in Cleveland for her husband’s two-year medical fellowship. She and I quickly ­became partners in an adventure not entirely of our own making.

Our families often ate to­gether, and we folded each other’s laundry. Sometimes after the kids’ bedtime, Nat would grab the baby monitor and tiptoe down the back stairwell that was the artery of our lives. We’d drink cheap wine, swap fingernail polish, and sort out who we wanted to be.

Nat’s initial fear of a new country gave way to a growing pride in her independence. She wanted to return home free of the old desire to please everyone, but worried that she might not be able to escape that habit of guilt.

I was nearly a decade older, newly launched into a world of uncertainty. Most of my longtime friends seemed settled into calm, predictable lives. That wasn’t true, of course, but fear alters our view, casting others in a soft glow that seems to elude us.

When I look back, I see how timing was everything for Natalie and me. Both of us felt hurled to the winds, but anchored by our faith in each other. I marveled at her ability to adapt, her gift for ending nearly every day laughing. She celebrated my strong shoulders and stubborn will, making me feel steadier on my feet.

In the last weeks before the Scalias returned to Australia, Nat and I would look at each other and start blubbering. Two years of friendship over, just like that.

As the past two decades have taught us, we needn’t have ­worried.

We are joined by the lives we forged in transition, bearing witness to each other’s finest hours.